Ghost Stories

Maynooth Ghost Stories

Disclaimer: These may be part or indeed all fictional. For our sakes we hope it is entirely made up.

The Famous Ghost Room

If you visit Maynooth today, you might come across an old building on the campus called Rhetoric House. You might notice that one of the windows on the top floor is boarded-up and you might wonder why. If you ask someone, they will tell you this is The Ghost Room.

Many years ago, students who went to Maynooth would live on the top floor of the building. There was one young man who was assigned to sleep in Room No.2. One day, when he didn’t show up for lectures, his friends went looking for him. They found his dead body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of Room No.2 with his throat slit from ear to ear. Clutched in his hand was a bloody razor and it appeared that he had taken his own life.

Ireland was a Catholic country and, at the time, suicide was seen as a terrible sin. The matter was hushed up by the college and the student was buried in an unconsecrated part of the college cemetery, away from the other graves.

For the rest of the year, the room lay vacant, but when the next year began, it was assigned to another young man. To the shock and horror of everyone involved, this young man was also found dead under the exact same circumstances. He had slashed his own neck with a razor.

The college authorities were horrified to have two suicides on their hands. The fact that they both happened in the same room was even more unsettling. However, they decided to hush it up again and the student was quietly buried and everyone tried to forget what had happened.

Despite all of these forboding events, the very next year, the college assigned another young man to live in Room No.2. One morning, after mass, the student jumped out of the window of his room and landed on the ground outside Rhetoric House. He had broken most of the bones in his body, but he was still alive. In his hand, he was clutching a razor. When they brought him to hospital, the student had a terrifying tale to tell.

While he was in his room that morning, he happened to glance in the mirror and was horrified to see a demonic face staring back at him. Suddenly, he was overcome by a powerful urge to kill himself. Unable to control himself, he grabbed a razor and was about to slit his own throat. Struggling against the demonic force, he managed to throw himself out the window and this is what saved his life.

After hearing the young man’s story, the college authorities decided to investigate. They asked one of the priests to stay the night in the haunted room. In the morning, they found him curled up in a ball, gibbering and shrieking like a maniac. His hair had turned completely white and he refused to say a word about his harrowing experience.

The college president decided that enough was enough and nobody else must ever be allowed to spend the night in Room no.2. He immediately ordered that room was to be turned into an oratory. The window was boarded up, the front wall was knocked down and the door was removed. A shrine to St. Joseph, the patron saint of Peaceful Death, was placed on an altar at the back of the room.

If you go there today, they say you can still see bloodstains on the wooden floor. Nobody is ever allowed to bring a mirror into the room. The graves of the dead students still stand in the cemetery and their names are carved on a bronze plaque in the college as a grim reminder of the horrific events that occurred there.

The Ghost of Aula Maxima

There are numerous stories detailing the presence of a ghost in Aula Maxima. Simply known as the Aula Ghost, he is reputed to be the spirit of a projectionist, active in Maynooth in the 1940s. The projectionist was a seminarian and member of St Patrick's College who fell to his death from the projectionist's box in Aula Maxima.Many superstitions exist regarding treatment of Aula Maxima and the Aula Ghost. One such superstition centres on the ghost's apparent turning of a chair placed over the projection box to face away from the stage if he does not like a performance, or the manner in which the staging of the performance was conducted.

The Clock of Failure

South Campus looks like a completely different University to the North. It’s especially gorgeous under snow, and you’ve imagined being in Harry Potter at least once.

Just don’t THINK about walking in a straight line towards the clock in St Joseph’s Square, unless you want to fail everything. Rumour has it many a student has started at the clock on their post examination route home only to be greeted by exam results painted in failure. We here have tested the fallacy and found it to be only 5o% true, but that wasn’t all the clocks fault.